Amalgamation may not cut down on costs: report
Posted January 19, 2014 9:45 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
NORTH VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The amalgamation debate is never far away from places like North Vancouver or Langley.
Some research in Ontario suggests it doesn’t help cut costs.
Instead, government grows, according to a look at the experience in Ontario, where the number of municipalities was cut by almost half in the 90’s.
Tim Cobban at the University of Western Ontario says the local public sector is bigger. “The municipal sector grew at a much more accelerated rate in the decade following the Common Sense Revolution than the decade preceding it.”
He says one possible explanation is that people want services to rise to whatever standard is best. “You want the same response times for ambulance and fire, you want libraries that are open six days a week instead of two, you want bus service or household waste collection, and so there’s that kind of pressure upward on services.”
At home, amalgamation has support within some groups in places like the North Shore and in Langley.
